I spent my weekend in a graphic workshop learning the art of cyanotype. Or, to be more precise, studying the method of cyanotype – the art will hopefully enter into my work as I go along. Cyanotype is a nineteenth century photographic process using chemicals that produce beautiful blue prints when exposed to sunlight. The…
Tag: Bluets
Falling into art
The French artist Yves Klein is perhaps most famous for his invention of the color International Klein Blue (IKB), IKB was developed by Yves Klein in collaboration with Edouard Adam, a Parisian art paint supplier whose shop is still in business on the Boulevard Edgar-Quinet in Paris. The uniqueness of IKB does not derive from the…
Besetzung
MOTHERs by Rachel Zucker -the body of my mother is everywhere- … Last spring I fell in love with Bluets, this spring MOTHERs have become the most disturbing & sacred book in my possession. There is a kinship between the two, an affinity in form: both being hybrids, part memoirs and part poetry, and both…
Visibilization – (apropos color)
I have been studying color lately, blue has been my main focus, but of course one can not study a color in isolation – This summer New York’s Guggenheim Museum is presenting an exhibition I would have loved to visit, a solo exhibition by James Turrell – all about color, and light. Turrell’s installation, Aten Reign,…
15 stones too many!
In my ongoing quest for blue I’ve today reached William Gass’ On Being Blue. A Philosophical Inquiry (1975). To my surprise, Gass starts off by quoting a text passage which I believe to be among the best pieces of literature ever written – The sucking-stones sequence, here is Molloy: I took advantage of being at the…
How come blue is the color of melancholy?
Today my study of Bluets has led me home – Edvard Munch, Melankoli (Melancholy), oil on canvas, 1892 © National Gallery, Oslo As with many of Edvard Munch‘s works, “Melancholy” appears in several different versions and techniques. (His repeated use of the same concepts has made it difficult to identify some works due to the lack of…
There would seem to be a lesson here, but I am not prepared to describe it –
While writing a book, I’m influenced by things the same way I would imagine most writers are: I look for what I want to steal, then I steal it, and make my own weird stew of the goods – Maggie Nelson * writing Bluets * ludwig wittgenstein (1889 – 1951) *
Lovely Blueness
Just the other day Jim Elkins made me aware of a very fine text on blue written by Colm Tóibín. In 2004 Colm Tóibín curated an exhibition at the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin called ‘Blue’ which consisted of blue objects from the collection. The following passages are derived from In Lovely Blueness: Adventures in Troubled Light, Tóibín’s introductory essay to…
measuring blueness
Delving into Blue(ts) Today I have been reading about cyanometry and the cyanometer. CYANOMETRY: The study and measurement of the blueness of light; the measurement of intensity of blue light, especially of the blue of the sky. The cyanometer is attributed to Horace-Bénédict de Saussure (1740–99), a Swiss physicist and geologist, famous for his studies of the…
sub rosa 